Reading about the “Daslu” luxury lifestyle extravagance made me nauseous. Knowing from research conducted last year of the contributions to art and street culture their countrymen at the lower end of society have been campaigning underground.
Sao Paulo’s ghetto “favela” inhabitants, creating massive graffiti mosaics of emaciated women, clutching coat hangers with dresses disintegrating into nothingness seem to highlight the social hardships ignored by their wealthier constituents. These images are repeated on main artilleries and even in the sewers all showing a really prominent discontent and social imbalance, that compounded by the minority of wealthy makes the social landscape volatile at best. Having known nothing of Daslu during my original foray into Sao Paulo underworld, street-culture and graffiti art, their own struggles however side stepped by the exclusive clientele whom travel by air or armoured car into the Daslu emporium.
As for my response to luxury and the lifestyle that it encourages really irritated me further. How we’re marketed to, images of grandeur offered to us as we’re inevitably groomed into smaller market sectors of these “luxury” labels, we can’t afford the couture dress then we get the perfume. These small purchases extending the gap between the haves and the have-nots as we ourselves are creating massive market contribution stability and allowing couture to becoming further distance away from our reach.
Luxury is something that I personally disagree with justifying in a contemporary society, why can’t we show a pride in a quality design and originality, as opposed to blind label loyalty.
